People who make a living on TikTok by pushing their businesses and personal brands on the app were worried on Sunday that they would have to find new ways to make money and connect with customers since the app’s future in the US was still unclear.
Just hours after going offline because of a government ban, TikTok told users in the U.S. that it was starting to restore service. Trump, who will be president in January, said he would try to stop the ban by executive order on his first day in office.
Sunday, some users said the app was working again, but you still couldn’t get it from the Apple or Google app shops. Others were still not able to get into their online profiles or the groups they had built.
This is how content makers are responding:
The esthetician misses her internet friends
Every morning, Lee Zavorskas, an esthetician and social media star, drinks coffee and looks through TikTok. Sunday morning was different. Instead of watching TikTok, she wrote down a list of things she needed to do, such as playing with her cats and dog and planning how to boost her popularity on other sites like YouTube since TikTok shut down for her on Saturday night.
“I’m a 58-year-old content creator who got a seat at the table that Instagram doesn’t give me,” Zavorskas said.
More people follow Zavorskas on Instagram, but she found a lot of people over 40 on TikTok, which made it easy to grow her audience. Still, she had some faith that she could go back to the group she had met on the app.
“They’re like that restaurant where you order your best food and they’re like, ‘You know what? “We got rid of it,” she said.
Small business owners are worried about the future
Tiffany Cianci, a content creator from Maryland who also owns small businesses, got angry and stopped writing on Twitter and Instagram. She also stopped advertising with Meta and Google.
She said, “It’s TikTok or nothing for me.”
She believes that lawmakers punished TikTok unfairly because it was doing well along with its profitable rivals. She also said that they “played political football” with an app that millions of small businesses depend on to stay open.
Cianci said, “In the last three days, I’ve talked to small businesses that have been crying on my livestreams because they’re afraid they’ll have to fire their workers tomorrow morning.” “They’re too scared to do anything because their lives depend on it.”
Beauty creator shifts to YouTube
A 20-year-old woman named Tiffany Watson made beauty videos back when Musical.ly was still around. When TikTok shut down, she was just starting to figure out what kind of videos she liked making.
The group on TikTok is unique, so she thought it was strange that they were no longer there.
Now that Watson has some free time, she wants to improve her influence on Instagram and YouTube. She also wants to spend more time on school because she is getting ready to finish at Wingate University in North Carolina with a major in psychology and a minor in criminal justice and go out into “the real world.” But she said that making material is still her “main dream.”
Watson says she will go back to TikTok if Trump lifts the ban, but she will “probably be more tuned into my YouTube since this ban has kinda scared me.”
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